I’m sitting here in this hotel room and suddenly I’m struck dumb. No fighting children to break apart, no dinner to prepare, no responsibilities. I could write all night if I so wished. But nope, nothing. Too quiet, no time limit.

But I’m not here to write this blog post anyway.

Truth is, I came here for two nights alone to uncover something. It’s something I have long known was waiting for me but I have pushed it away – so far away and so long ago that I’m not even sure where to start looking (or what I’m looking for.) Years of therapy have not helped, rather only frustrated and alarmed me. Even my journal has not taken me where I have needed to go because I haven’t allowed myself to. I was not ready. I’m not sure I’m ready now. But I had to try and it had to be in place far away from my family, my home, my life, in order to come to terms with the past before I return to the present.

In her book, Journal to the Self, Kathleen Adams writes of a weekend after a devastating break-up where she went away by herself. She wrote for two days. She wrote and she wrote. And she cried, and screamed, and swore, on paper and out loud. And then she was done. She purged her sorrow by dealing with it head on. And then she was bored with it all and walked out of that place ready to move on.

That is my plan. I haven’t had a chance to do this until now. And now I’m here and I’m scared. Scared of what I might discover under the surface of my mind, but at the same time scared that I won’t be able to get there. While I don’t really want to know the truth of my past I know I must face it in order to live my life to the fullest. Whatever is hidden in my memories – stuffed away long ago for self-protection – is actually hurting me. While I do not truly understand some of my actions and reactions on a day to day basis, I do know that my Subconscious is seeing life through the lens of those memories. I must now align my Conscious and Subconscious eyes.

We hold all the answers inside. We have the inner wisdom we need to heal ourselves. Just as Jewelweed grows in close proximity to the Poison Ivy whose sting its leaves and juice sooth, so too our pain and its balm live side by side in our Subconscious.

So for the next day I will open my journal, my mind, and hopefully my memories. I hope I am prepared for what I will find there. If not, I must trust that I will get through it with the help of my journal.

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